couple 90s Action Movies

I watched these, and they’re fairly similar, so please enjoy these thoughts on Sudden Death and Rapid Fire.

Sudden Death 1995

★★★½

This is way fucking weirder than I could have ever remembered. It’s some ways slavishly a Die Hard remake, and some ways bizarrely different.

One of the most pronounced quirks is that the group of terrorists is omniscient and can literally do anything as if they are a wizard. They never show all the terrorists, and continually have Powers Boothe saying “I have men everywhere!”

JCVD’s helper with the Secret Service turns out to be a bad guy, and unless I missed something, never gets caught or exposed. He just goes back to his post at some point and pretends to work. Unless he gets kicked or captured real fast and I missed it.

Normally the bad guys have some kind of badass physical specimen lieutenant for JCVD to fight near the end of the movie. Here, this fight happens right at the beginning! And even more surprisingly, the badass fighter henchmen is a woman. And uh. Most surprisingly, she fights JCVD in the full Penguins Mascot Costume. Courageous choice.

There have been great movies where the protagonist and antagonist never meet face to face really (The Fifth Element comes to mind first). Sudden Death has the same dynamic, largely shuttling all the great Hans/McClane moments from Die Hard. JCVD only sees his face as he mean mugs Powers Boothe while his helicopter beautifully perfectly crashes at a 90 degree angle.

Speaking of Powers Boothe, his villain is totally undercooked. His plan or motivations or whatever is never really explored or scratched any further than skin deep.

Also say hi to THE GREAT Raymond J Barry as the Vice President.

Rapid Fire 1992

★★★★

Look, I just started this because I wanted to see Powers Boothe and Raymond J Barry antagonize each other again (see: Sudden Death). And Brandon Lee has always been an interesting case. His team-up with Dolph Lundgren in Showdown in Little Tokyo is one of my favorite awful movies.

Anyways, this is a pretty cool blend of martial arts movie and action movie without ever feeling overstuffed. It’s got the odd couple and jazzy soundtrack of Lethal Weapon. It uses the setting to pretty good effect, especially in introducing the Chicago Chekov’s L Train. There’s an incredibly bizarre end of Act 2 montage that cuts the cops’ plans all failing in action scenes with a full nudity sex scene set to a weird hair metal song. I can’t do it justice.

They saved the best for last. After a very long scene resembling the Onion article “Man On Gurney Has Brief Word With Protagonist Before Entering Ambulance”, the male and female lead jump in the back of an ambulance. The shot evokes The Graduate- They’re in the back, another jazzy song firing up, and the landscape visible behind them in the ambulance windows. They even share a few of the same nervous looks from that famous last shot.

Am I reading way too far into the ending of this boilerplate 90’s action movie? Maybe. Am I overrating this for exceeding my low expectations? Definitely. But whatever, it’s fun and carves out a kind of unique little movie.